Queen
by QueenMaj
Summary: She is a queen, with reiatsu as pure white as snow. How can a girl from Zaraki have such a pure soul? -Nanao-


**This loosely ties into my fic "Searching For My Name Among The Stars".**

She is a queen.

She has read storybooks, and she knows that queens are supposed to have silken gowns and beautiful jewelery and heavy silver crowns. They live in lavish palaces and eat delicious food. There are also rose gardens involved, and a fair amount of makeup.

She has none of this. She is a skinny, starving child without a place to go. A wandering soul in West District 80, one of the worst places you can be. She has nothing, she is nothing. But once, a very long time ago, someone she loved and trusted told her she was a queen. It is a very fuzzy memory, left over from her human life, and it is indistinct. But the words are clear and sweet.

She hears them, and so she believes.

Besides, Zaraki really isn't all that bad. There is beauty and magic here, if one knows where to look. She finds it everywhere - in the clumps of dandelions defiantly growing on the muddy riverbank; in the way that the bits of glass in the street shimmer and sparkle like diamonds in the sunshine; in the way that, even though there are robberies and murders and brawls happening right now, the sky is still so blue.

She can also make it. She concentrates, channels the pure white reiatsu that hums through her, and makes a small light glow at her fingertips. The power races through her veins, leaving her breathless in anticipation, even though she has no idea what she's waiting for.

So maybe her silken gown is a tattered, too-big gray yukata. Maybe her silver crown is a wreath of dried grass. Maybe her palace is an abandoned hut with moldy walls down by the riverside. Maybe her royal feast is made up of stale bread and old, leathery fruit. None of that matters.

She is a queen, and nothing can touch her.

She enters the academy, and at first, she gravitates towards kidou. It's neat and tidy, and besides, she is a queen, not a monster. Only monsters use swords, as she very well knows. She's read all the storybooks, after all. She knows these things to be true. Queens are prim and proper. Swords are not meant for their hands.

But the moment she touches her blade, Junsui no Yuki no Tenshi, the power that has been inside her the whole time is bubbling and crashing excitedly, and she thinks that she was never really a queen anyway.

It is a long time before she meets anyone like her, so long that she has begun to doubt that there is anyone. She is the Eigth Division's fifth seat at the time. Kuchiki-taichou, whom she has always admired, annonces that he is adopting a girl into his family. A girl by the name of Rukia.

Rukia nervously steps out to stand next to her new brother, and her eyes instantly lock onto Nanao's. Both of them can feel it - each has pure white reiatsu, like snow. No one else has reiatsu so clean. Most people's souls are interesting mixes of colors, light ones with darker streaks mixed in. Her taichou's reiatsu is a bright and airy pink, run through with dark, angry streaks of purplish-black.

Nanao stares at Rukia, and Rukia stares back. Through some sort of unspoken agreement, they meet up outside the room when the metting is over. Hardly any words are necessary.

"Nanao Ise."

"Rukia Kuchiki."

They become friends, and Nanao wonders if they are the only pure ones left. Queens, beautiful and strong, in a world of townspeople, broken and corrupt and flawed.

She hopes not.

**As best as I can understand from Google Translate, Junsui no Yuki no Tenshi means "Angel of pure snow". I went with the whole white reiatsu thing because I read somewhere that the color of your reiatsu is determined by your personality and the content of your soul. Basically, dark colors are bad, and light colors are good. So when I saw that Rukia's reiatsu was a pure, snowy white, I thought that it must mean that her soul was "clean" - no greed, no hatred, no anger. Then, I found myself applying it to other characters, and this happened. Hope you like it! :-)**

**\- QueenMaj**


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